The 20 Biggest Mess-Ups/Mistakes in CW History - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

TMC · 09-15-2013, 05:07 AM

I plan on making a thread for every American broadcast network (i.e. ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox), in regards to the worst network decisions (e.g. worst attempts, biggest failures, and inabilities) ever. Since the CW doesn't have as big of a history as the other networks, I'm going to count its past incarnations as UPN and the WB respectively.

comedyfreak · 09-15-2013, 08:21 AM

Good cause I have a one that has always bugged me. I hated that they pulled the plug on Everwood and renewed 7th Heaven instead.

Everwood was a much better show imo.

Tubehead · 09-15-2013, 08:25 AM

I would add when they moved small ville to Fridays

TMC · 10-17-2013, 01:57 AM

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...k/LiveActionTV

The CW rented out the Sunday-night slots for the 2008-09 season to Media Rights Capital. The shows — 4Real, In Harm's Way, Easy Money, and Valentine — scored such terrible ratings that The CW repossessed the timeslot and put in reruns of The Drew Carey Show and Jericho, plus movies. The ratings immediately jumped back to pre rent-a-block levels (although still test-pattern low), and after the season The CW gave up completely on Sundays and gave the time back to their stations.

Valentine was critically-acclaimed, but despite liking the premise nobody tuned in. Why? No advertisement whatsoever.

The CW started screwing over a lot of shows, particularly their half-hour comedies. Everybody Hates Chris and The Game got cancelled. Another show, Aliens In America, despite receiving good reviews and having decent ratings, got the worst treatment by not only being moved to the Sunday slot but never even airing the later episodes. (Needless to say, its ratings were pretty much destroyed. Doesn't help that the Writers Strike caused the last few episodes of its first and only season to never be finished.) While Reaper (a dramedy about a young slacker who must be Satan's bounty hunter) did get the dignity of a second season, it still got screwed over by CW. Like the many other shows they screwed over, Reaper suffered mostly through lack of advertising. Go look at the ratings for each season 2 episode — they plummet, and plummet hard, about halfway through. One cast member later mocked the network's protestations of innocence, saying "They say they're disappointed? We're disappointed!" and points out how the network basically refused to promote the show.

The last seasons of Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars had so much executive meddling from Dawn Ostroff and the other people at UPN who somehow fell upward into the executive suite of the new network that the slam-dunk "Girl Power Tuesday"' dream lineup which had been gushed about by critics and fans at the time of the merger ended up failing miserably. This was due to The CW forcing the shows to hire writers that didn't know anything about either show's canon (certainly not helping was The CW not allowing Amy Sherman-Palladino to continue with Gilmore Girls), insulting the intelligence of their fanbase by hyperfocusing on the lead actors of each show when both programs had been built on ensemble casts, forcing Veronica to abandon the season-wide arcs of the past for "crime of the week" episodes, and finally the "Content Wrap" (an advertising concept created by the network putting a brand front and center in a non-subtle way) deal with American Eagle Outfitters which forced the Aerie Girls onto fanbases that considered them completely against the spirit of both series.

Ironically, one show that CW tried to screw repeatedly and never succeeded in was Smallville. Repeatedly firing and replacing writers, sometimes in between seasons, moving the show from its very popular timeslot on Thursday to Friday for no reason, and cutting the budget of one season in half and giving it to The Vampire Diaries, it was obvious the network (or rather the network's president, who openly despised sci-fi shows and wanted to shill 90210 and Gossip Girl instead) just wanted this show to die. But despite all the changes, Smallville managed to hang onto good ratings and the series ended on its own terms and not on CW's terms.

"Supernatural" received similar treatment, and people involved with the show have begun to publicly state that Dawn Ostroff was out to kill the show. While it stayed on Thursdays and followed "The Vampire Diaries" for a time, the following season it was moved to the Friday Night Death Slot running against "Grimm" and "Fringe". "Supernatural" got the last laugh. The show survived the death sloth and moved to Wednesdays where it was used to launch "Arrow" another dark drama aimed at men. "Supernatural" is currently the third highest rated show on The CW. "90210" and "Gossip Girl" are no longer on the air.

Life Is Wild premiered in a Sunday-night timeslot and was sure to be canceled after the first season. And then it did, as well as Hidden Palms.

Both of them were victims of The CW deciding to throw out The WB's plan to expand their horizons and go into more expensive programming (UPN was infamous for spending as little on their shows as possible). As Life is Wild was shot on location in South Africa, it was screwed from the moment UPN and WB executives walked out together on January 24, 2005.

Despite decent ratings, The Secret Circle was canned by The CW after one season. Apparently, it's not even going to get a DVD release, although the complete series is available for streaming on Netflix.

Though the reason it lost out its spot to Hart Of Dixie came down to cost: Hart of Dixie was much cheaper to produce with similar ratings.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...edByTheNetwork

UPN attempted to screw WWE by moving WWE SmackDown! into the famed Friday Night Death Slot (where it would face not only constant pre-emptions for local sports, but the loss of a good portion of its audience to people getting out and doing stuff on Friday nights), in order to try and pressure WWE into keeping Monday Night Raw on Spike TV. However, thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign by WWE (even rebranding the show Friday Night SmackDown!), the show managed not only to not lose any viewers, but gained enough ground that it was one of the few UPN shows picked up by the post-merger CW.

They ultimately wound up screwing them anyway, but it took a few years; when it came time to renew contracts, CBS wasn't interested despite the high ratings. SmackDown moved to the much-less-notable My Network TV, and started beating The CW in ratings by a good margin.

Then it got screwed by Memphis and Des Moines when those cities decided to dump My Network TV after they went to a syndicated model in September 2009, however in both cases the CW affiliate picked SmackDown up for Saturday nights and pretty much got station upgrades otherwise. The rest of the My Network TV schedule was blissfully ignored by both of them.

Sadly, high ratings for wrestling mean NOTHING. Advertisers won't touch it (they believe that it's aimed at the lowest common denominator, and that the viewers won't buy products being advertised; the much-publicized switch to TV-PG doesn't change this), and the only real value is to pump up the network average for prime time. Since UPN and its successors-in-interest are already dead last, and WWE numbers are and were low enough by broadcast standards not to make any difference, they have no compunction about moving/canceling wrestling programming.

cherryade · 10-17-2013, 03:02 AM

The big mistake was handing the merged network to Dawn Ostroff, who ran UPN, who drove it into the ground. It was effectively a takeover of The WB by the less successful UPN.

I think the network is making better decisions ever since her successor Mark Pedowitz took over.

TMC · 10-17-2013, 03:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cherryade

The big mistake was handing the merged network to Dawn Ostroff, who ran UPN, who drove it into the ground. It was effectively a takeover of The WB by the less successful UPN.

I think the network is making better decisions ever since her successor Mark Pedowitz took over.

Dawn Ostroff always struck me as a woman who hated sci-fi or generally male dominated programming. I don't know a lot of what she did over at UPN, but it seemed most like this at the CW. She seemed to want the CW to be I guess, a broadcast TV version of modern day MTV (which panders to young otherwise materialistic girls) or Fox of the early '90s (w/ the new versions of 90210 and Melrose Place).

factsoflife · 10-19-2013, 05:30 PM

Not seeing the value in continuing with a seventh season of "Reba", which was the highest rated comedy on the WB network. Apparently they felt that a show with Reba McEntire as the lead was simply going to skew too old. They didn't realize that the majority of the audience that watched REBA were teenagers and people in their 20's.

Not picking up "Charmed" as one of the shows that would air on The CW. "Charmed" was for a time one of the most popular shows on The WB, and not ordering another season of it was a stupid mistake. I think it could have gone another year or two and helped boost ratings for the CW in it's first seasons.

Trying too hard to convince America that "Gossip Girl" was a massive hit, when in reality very few people actually watched.

Picking up too many series that look the same and sound the same, insisting on this stupid idea that every show must have some sort of connection to high school or college, and making the network focus only on young viewers.

Allowing America's Next Top Model to continue to run well past it's peak. This show should have been killed YEARS ago.

Not enough (or any) comedy. Almost every show on The CW is an action drama or girly soap, there are few, if any comedic series on the network.

Turning every show into a Vampire show... too many supernatural/vampire shows! get some originality!

TMC · 10-20-2013, 04:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by factsoflife

Not seeing the value in continuing with a seventh season of "Reba", which was the highest rated comedy on the WB network. Apparently they felt that a show with Reba McEntire as the lead was simply going to skew too old. They didn't realize that the majority of the audience that watched REBA were teenagers and people in their 20's.

Not picking up "Charmed" as one of the shows that would air on The CW. "Charmed" was for a time one of the most popular shows on The WB, and not ordering another season of it was a stupid mistake. I think it could have gone another year or two and helped boost ratings for the CW in it's first seasons.

Trying too hard to convince America that "Gossip Girl" was a massive hit, when in reality very few people actually watched.

Picking up too many series that look the same and sound the same, insisting on this stupid idea that every show must have some sort of connection to high school or college, and making the network focus only on young viewers.

Allowing America's Next Top Model to continue to run well past it's peak. This show should have been killed YEARS ago.

Not enough (or any) comedy. Almost every show on The CW is an action drama or girly soap, there are few, if any comedic series on the network.

Turning every show into a Vampire show... too many supernatural/vampire shows! get some originality!

The CW seems to never be able to really play to what could be considered the respective strengths of UPN the WB. UPN corned the urban market w/ its sitcoms and was I guess, known more for its sci-fi/action oriented shows. The WB meanwhile, seemed to be more family oriented and otherwise specialized in the "teen angst" market. When the CW came to be and Dawn Ostroff was overseeing it, it seemed like the network became way too niche-oriented. I do agree that I wish that the CW had much more diversity.

jimpickens · 10-20-2013, 04:34 AM

The biggest mistake that CW is making is not diversifying its programing they need programing aimed at the 25 and over crowd doesn't have be edgy perhaps an equal mix of edgier shows for late night and moderate programing for primetime.

EmoJoe · 10-20-2013, 09:26 PM

Their decision to only appeal to teen girls a few seasons ago almost killed them...it worked for maybe the first year or two, but then ABC Family took their audience with Pretty Little Liars and all of that ilk and the network came close to collapsing. They've remedied the situation in the past few years though - adding Arrow, capitalizing on Supernatural's male(r) audience and acquiring the relaunched Whose Line. I actually think the past year has been pretty good for The CW even if they still occasionally dip into catastrophically low ratings - they have a handful of solid players now (Arrow, Supernatural, Vampire Diaries and Originals is looking good so far) and are developing an image beyond "the network a small amount of teen girls watch". I'd like to see them try to dip into comedy again now that they have Whose Line.

irehtman · 10-21-2013, 12:59 PM

About that former WB president, the reason he or she had bad problems dealing more on comedies than dramas is that he or she might have a extremely troubled past life. When you have a troubled past life that means you are more negative on something wrong than positive on doing something right.

Sal · 10-21-2013, 03:50 PM

I was hoping to see FOX next. There's a network that has made a LOT of mistakes! CW is too small and insignificant to really bother with.

TMC · 10-21-2013, 04:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by irehtman

About that former WB president, the reason he or she had bad problems dealing more on comedies than dramas is that he or she might have a extremely troubled past life. When you have a troubled past life that means you are more negative on something wrong than positive on doing something right.

You mean Dawn Ostroff, who oversaw UPN, not the WB prior to the merger? With that being said, I have absolutely no idea where or how you came up w/ that particular comment.

irehtman · 12-30-2013, 02:35 PM

The WB made too many mistakes on its own comedies. Some of them need to be rebooted in a private network during by future.

TMC · 01-12-2014, 07:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by irehtman

The WB made too many mistakes on its own comedies. Some of them need to be rebooted in a private network during by future.

Okay, give me so good examples of the type of mistakes that the WB made regarding its sitcoms for me to take this more seriously!?

09-15-2013, 05:07 AM	#1
TMC Member Forum Idol Join Date: Jan 09, 2001 Posts: 125,181	The 20 Biggest Mess-Ups/Mistakes in CW History I plan on making a thread for every American broadcast network (i.e. ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox), in regards to the worst network decisions (e.g. worst attempts, biggest failures, and inabilities) ever. Since the CW doesn't have as big of a history as the other networks, I'm going to count its past incarnations as UPN and the WB respectively.
	Last edited by TMC; 10-17-2013 at 01:43 AM.

09-15-2013, 08:21 AM	#2
comedyfreak Cheers! Forum Fanatic Join Date: Dec 14, 2005 Location: Sunny California Posts: 11,058	Good cause I have a one that has always bugged me. I hated that they pulled the plug on Everwood and renewed 7th Heaven instead. Everwood was a much better show imo.
	__________________ www.facebook.com/comedyfreak

09-15-2013, 08:25 AM	#3
Tubehead Member Forum Veteran Join Date: Feb 12, 2007 Location: chattanooga.tn Posts: 5,139	cw mistkates I would add when they moved small ville to Fridays

10-17-2013, 01:57 AM	#4
TMC Member Forum Idol Join Date: Jan 09, 2001 Posts: 125,181	Shows that The CW "screwed" http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...k/LiveActionTV The CW rented out the Sunday-night slots for the 2008-09 season to Media Rights Capital. The shows — *4Real, In Harm's Way, Easy Money, and Valentine* — scored such terrible ratings that The CW repossessed the timeslot and put in reruns of The Drew Carey Show and Jericho, plus movies. The ratings immediately jumped back to pre rent-a-block levels (although still test-pattern low), and after the season The CW gave up completely on Sundays and gave the time back to their stations. Valentine was critically-acclaimed, but despite liking the premise nobody tuned in. Why? No advertisement whatsoever. The CW started screwing over a lot of shows, particularly their half-hour comedies. *Everybody Hates Chris* and *The Game* got cancelled. Another show, *Aliens In America, despite receiving good reviews and having decent ratings, got the worst treatment by not only being moved to the Sunday slot but never even airing the later episodes. (Needless to say, its ratings were pretty much destroyed. Doesn't help that the Writers Strike caused the last few episodes of its first and only season to never be finished.) While Reaper* (a dramedy about a young slacker who must be Satan's bounty hunter) did get the dignity of a second season, it still got screwed over by CW. Like the many other shows they screwed over, Reaper suffered mostly through lack of advertising. Go look at the ratings for each season 2 episode — they plummet, and plummet hard, about halfway through. One cast member later mocked the network's protestations of innocence, saying "They say they're disappointed? We're disappointed!" and points out how the network basically refused to promote the show. The last seasons of *Gilmore Girls* and *Veronica Mars* had so much executive meddling from Dawn Ostroff and the other people at UPN who somehow fell upward into the executive suite of the new network that the slam-dunk "Girl Power Tuesday"' dream lineup which had been gushed about by critics and fans at the time of the merger ended up failing miserably. This was due to The CW forcing the shows to hire writers that didn't know anything about either show's canon (certainly not helping was The CW not allowing Amy Sherman-Palladino to continue with Gilmore Girls), insulting the intelligence of their fanbase by hyperfocusing on the lead actors of each show when both programs had been built on ensemble casts, forcing Veronica to abandon the season-wide arcs of the past for "crime of the week" episodes, and finally the "Content Wrap" (an advertising concept created by the network putting a brand front and center in a non-subtle way) deal with American Eagle Outfitters which forced the Aerie Girls onto fanbases that considered them completely against the spirit of both series. Ironically, one show that CW tried to screw repeatedly and never succeeded in was *Smallville. Repeatedly firing and replacing writers, sometimes in between seasons, moving the show from its very popular timeslot on Thursday to Friday for no reason, and cutting the budget of one season in half and giving it to The Vampire Diaries, it was obvious the network (or rather the network's president, who openly despised sci-fi shows and wanted to shill 90210 and Gossip Girl instead) just wanted this show to die. But despite all the changes, Smallville managed to hang onto good ratings and the series ended on its own terms and not on CW's terms. "Supernatural"* received similar treatment, and people involved with the show have begun to publicly state that Dawn Ostroff was out to kill the show. While it stayed on Thursdays and followed "The Vampire Diaries" for a time, the following season it was moved to the Friday Night Death Slot running against "Grimm" and "Fringe". "Supernatural" got the last laugh. The show survived the death sloth and moved to Wednesdays where it was used to launch "Arrow" another dark drama aimed at men. "Supernatural" is currently the third highest rated show on The CW. "90210" and "Gossip Girl" are no longer on the air. *Life Is Wild* premiered in a Sunday-night timeslot and was sure to be canceled after the first season. And then it did, as well as Hidden Palms. Both of them were victims of The CW deciding to throw out The WB's plan to expand their horizons and go into more expensive programming (UPN was infamous for spending as little on their shows as possible). As Life is Wild was shot on location in South Africa, it was screwed from the moment UPN and WB executives walked out together on January 24, 2005. Despite decent ratings, *The Secret Circle* was canned by The CW after one season. Apparently, it's not even going to get a DVD release, although the complete series is available for streaming on Netflix. Though the reason it lost out its spot to Hart Of Dixie came down to cost: Hart of Dixie was much cheaper to produce with similar ratings. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...edByTheNetwork UPN attempted to screw WWE by moving WWE SmackDown! into the famed Friday Night Death Slot (where it would face not only constant pre-emptions for local sports, but the loss of a good portion of its audience to people getting out and doing stuff on Friday nights), in order to try and pressure WWE into keeping Monday Night Raw on Spike TV. However, thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign by WWE (even rebranding the show Friday Night SmackDown!), the show managed not only to not lose any viewers, but gained enough ground that it was one of the few UPN shows picked up by the post-merger CW. They ultimately wound up screwing them anyway, but it took a few years; when it came time to renew contracts, CBS wasn't interested despite the high ratings. SmackDown moved to the much-less-notable My Network TV, and started beating The CW in ratings by a good margin. Then it got screwed by Memphis and Des Moines when those cities decided to dump My Network TV after they went to a syndicated model in September 2009, however in both cases the CW affiliate picked SmackDown up for Saturday nights and pretty much got station upgrades otherwise. The rest of the My Network TV schedule was blissfully ignored by both of them. Sadly, high ratings for wrestling mean NOTHING. Advertisers won't touch it (they believe that it's aimed at the lowest common denominator, and that the viewers won't buy products being advertised; the much-publicized switch to TV-PG doesn't change this), and the only real value is to pump up the network average for prime time. Since UPN and its successors-in-interest are already dead last, and WWE numbers are and were low enough by broadcast standards not to make any difference, they have no compunction about moving/canceling wrestling programming.
	Last edited by TMC; 10-17-2013 at 02:47 AM.

10-19-2013, 05:30 PM	#7
factsoflife Member Forum Fanatic Join Date: Sep 11, 2000 Posts: 8,744	Not seeing the value in continuing with a seventh season of "Reba", which was the highest rated comedy on the WB network. Apparently they felt that a show with Reba McEntire as the lead was simply going to skew too old. They didn't realize that the majority of the audience that watched REBA were teenagers and people in their 20's. Not picking up "Charmed" as one of the shows that would air on The CW. "Charmed" was for a time one of the most popular shows on The WB, and not ordering another season of it was a stupid mistake. I think it could have gone another year or two and helped boost ratings for the CW in it's first seasons. Trying too hard to convince America that "Gossip Girl" was a massive hit, when in reality very few people actually watched. Picking up too many series that look the same and sound the same, insisting on this stupid idea that every show must have some sort of connection to high school or college, and making the network focus only on young viewers. Allowing America's Next Top Model to continue to run well past it's peak. This show should have been killed YEARS ago. Not enough (or any) comedy. Almost every show on The CW is an action drama or girly soap, there are few, if any comedic series on the network. Turning every show into a Vampire show... too many supernatural/vampire shows! get some originality!
	__________________ "and to the fans. I was only supposed to be on every other Tuesday. But, thanks to you, I'm here, and I promise! I will try my best never to let you down. I am going back into that studio on Monday, and I'm going to play Erica Kane for all she's worth!"-- Susan Lucci, May 1999 Daytime Emmy Speech.

10-17-2013, 03:02 AM	#5
cherryade Member Occasional Poster Join Date: Feb 01, 2013 Posts: 65	The big mistake was handing the merged network to Dawn Ostroff, who ran UPN, who drove it into the ground. It was effectively a takeover of The WB by the less successful UPN. I think the network is making better decisions ever since her successor Mark Pedowitz took over.

10-20-2013, 04:34 AM	#9
jimpickens Member Senior Member Join Date: Nov 01, 2007 Location: weston,wv Posts: 1,389	The biggest mistake that CW is making is not diversifying its programing they need programing aimed at the 25 and over crowd doesn't have be edgy perhaps an equal mix of edgier shows for late night and moderate programing for primetime.

10-20-2013, 09:26 PM	#10
EmoJoe Cool cool cool Forum Addict Join Date: Apr 23, 2004 Location: New Jersey Posts: 71,478	Their decision to only appeal to teen girls a few seasons ago almost killed them...it worked for maybe the first year or two, but then ABC Family took their audience with Pretty Little Liars and all of that ilk and the network came close to collapsing. They've remedied the situation in the past few years though - adding Arrow, capitalizing on Supernatural's male(r) audience and acquiring the relaunched Whose Line. I actually think the past year has been pretty good for The CW even if they still occasionally dip into catastrophically low ratings - they have a handful of solid players now (Arrow, Supernatural, Vampire Diaries and Originals is looking good so far) and are developing an image beyond "the network a small amount of teen girls watch". I'd like to see them try to dip into comedy again now that they have Whose Line.
	__________________ "I know the difference between TV and reality, Jeff. TV has structure, it makes sense, there are likable leading men. In real life, we have this. We have you." - Abed Nadir, Community www.sitcomsarestupid.blogspot.com

10-21-2013, 12:59 PM	#11
irehtman Member Forum 4000 Club Member Join Date: Mar 15, 2013 Location: Montgomery County, Maryland Posts: 4,824	About that former WB president, the reason he or she had bad problems dealing more on comedies than dramas is that he or she might have a extremely troubled past life. When you have a troubled past life that means you are more negative on something wrong than positive on doing something right.

10-21-2013, 03:50 PM	#12
Sal Member Forum Veteran Join Date: Jul 20, 2001 Location: Oakville, Ont. Canada Posts: 6,165	I was hoping to see FOX next. There's a network that has made a LOT of mistakes! CW is too small and insignificant to really bother with.
	__________________ LIVE TV - Updated By Request - April 2026 ANTENNA TV ME TV ME TV TOONS Zerostream - LIVE TV Guide

12-30-2013, 02:35 PM	#14
irehtman Member Forum 4000 Club Member Join Date: Mar 15, 2013 Location: Montgomery County, Maryland Posts: 4,824	The WB made too many mistakes on its own comedies. Some of them need to be rebooted in a private network during by future.